Slashdot Mirror
Canada Supreme Court Broadens Internet "Luring" Offense
An anonymous reader points out this report that a Canadian Supreme Court has broadened its interpretation of an existing law designed to punish adults who attempt to meet children online for criminal purposes; under the court's interpretation, says the article, that would now "include anyone having an inappropriate conversation with a child — even if the chats aren't sexual in nature and the accused never intended to meet the alleged victim." The story quotes Mark Hecht, of the organization Beyond Borders, thus: "If you're an adult and if you're having conversations with a child on the Internet, be warned because even if your conversations aren't sexual and even if your conversations are not for the purpose of meeting a child and committing an offence against a child, what you're doing is potentially a crime."
Does this include forums and the like? I didn't see anything defining what a conversation is.
So I would have to leave Halo matches instead of insulting 12-year olds about their moms?
Yeah, sucks..
What counts as innapropriate? Discussing an age-restriced movie with someone below that age rating? Talking about drugs? And who decides what is an isn't appropriate?
Sorry, but talking to someone (anyone) is not illegal in itself.
MABASPLOOM!
If I'm playing an MMO and strike up a text chat with another character, not having any idea that this person is LEGALLY a "child" (IE: Under 18 years of age) and the conversation turns to drinking, then I could be ARRESTED in Canada?
WTF Canadians? I thought you people were nice and sensible!?
Official Heretic from the "Church of Global Warming". Proven right thanks to whistle blowers. AGW = Flat Earth Theory
The article doesn't specify whether the counterparty in the chat has to have claimed to be a child.
Speaking to children online ruled illegal;
A worldwide shift back to the "Seen, but not heard," philosophy ruins childhood for everyone.
I can see it now, people being put on the sex offenders register for saying things like "suck my balls" to their opponents in a Call of Duty multiplayer match only to find out they're underage, even though the kids shouldn't legally be playing the game in the first place.
I get mad at you, buy a gun, walk around with it loaded for a few days, never seriously intending to do anything to you or anyone else...and I'm guilty of attempted murder instead of just some degree of weapons charge?
When all of your wishes have been granted, many of your dreams will be destroyed - Marilyn Manson
And just how is someone to know if it's a child one is chatting with?
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
ban children from internet altogether!
It seems more and more reasonable to give kids their own version of the internet completely. That way we wont get crazy someone think of the children laws.
other than situations where they answer the phone and you ask to speak to their parents or they are visiting your kids. why would an adult need to communicate with someone else's child over the internet?
I love inflammatory comments as much as the next /.er, but I can't imagine this law being used on its own to prosecute somebody. Most likely it'll be used as part of child exploitation cases just to pile on the charges or find something to pin on the defendant. So probably not a big deal...
...unless the local DA (or Canada's equivalent) has a bone to pick with you.
mmmm...forbidden donut
I can just see the disaster that is "having an inappropriate conversation" being put to the test.
Defendant "Your honor, all I was doing was talking about which blue cheese tastes best as a pasta sauce."
Judge "Well, that may be the case, but you were on a technical forum. 2 years in Federal Pound You in the Ass Prison."
Can we get this over with and just lock up all adult males? Obviously, we are all sexual predator pedophiles.
How about they make a law stating that parents who let their kids get on these chat pages/programs unsupervised get publically flogged.
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
Do you have anything you'd like to tell the children before we go?
Yes... ...conform,consume obeeeeeeeeeeeeeeey!
93rd rule of Slashdot: No matter how obvious my sarcasm is, my comment will be taken seriously by someone.
A society which genuinely wanted to protect children would do things like reduce speed limits in built up areas to 10mph and imprison people who drive while talking on mobile phones - because the proponents of the legislation claim that any level of intrusion is justified if "a single child is saved".
Interestingly, the hysteria is driven by tabloid newspapers who, on other pages, will be moaning about the "Nanny State" - but this Canadian case seems to be about "the evil scum didn't commit an offence! We must create one so that in future similar evil scum can be charged with something!"
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
to Canadas youth: Stop ruining the internet for us adults. Seriously, go fuck yours---------CARRIER LOST
The NRA will not let that happen.
also this law seems to be a make any guilty law then can use on you to make say you are guilty to some other law just to keep the sex offenders off your rap sheet.
You mean I won't be able to sell crack on the Barney the Dinosaur message boards anymore? Thats where all my best customers come from!
Monstar L
You almost forgot .
I have two kids and this is one of those well intentioned potentially good laws. I would want my kids protected as much as possible while they are online, and in "real" life.
I do think though that this is like the death penalty - it is approached from the wrong end, take the death penalty as a metaphor for this law: (I copied this verbatim from a post on the death of the DC sniper over at godgab.org)
I think when people thing "deterrence" they think to far up the chain of human reasoning.
Death penalty or lifelong imprisonment are likely consequences of getting found guilty, and getting found guilty is a likely consequence of getting caught.
So for the average person the death penalty or lifelong imprisonment does not factor in their thinking when committing a crime, they think "will I get caught?"
Increasing the possibility of getting caught will have a greater impact on a person's decision to commit a crime than would increasing the possibility of getting the death penalty.
You see, if a person has a reasonable expectation that they will not get caught after committing a crime, the threat of death upon getting caught does not factor in their thinking. It's almost like Maslow's hierarchy of needs. There is a hierarchy in every person's chain of thought, and the same holds for a criminal.
I would suggest loosely that it goes something like this:
Commit crime:
1. What stops me from committing it in society? (Is crime acceptable in society? What will the societal impact be of being a known criminal? Do I need to commit a crime to survive/fulfil my needs/etc? Has a demographic engendered hate in me (i.e. racism) that I want to commit a crime against them (i.e. murder))
2. What stops me from committing it in this situation? (Security measures, time of day, my immediate needs etc.)
3. What is the likelihood of me being caught? (Effective policing, alert population)
4. What is likely to happen if I get caught during the act? (Is my victim armed, are there others close by to help the victim?)
5. What is likely to happen if I get caught after the fact? (Effective legal system)
6. What is my likely punishment? (Life in prison, death penalty?)
So you see, I think the death penalty or not argument is a waste of time. The problem of crime should be approached in a hierarchy from the basic deterrents to the eventual punishment. The punishment alone is not a deterrent, and will never be unless the other pieces of the puzzle have been filled in.
So there you have it. Writing new laws to threaten pedophiles with has no bearing on the crime if there is no reasonable expectation of getting caught. That said, protecting my kids begins with my parenting - if I sit back and let laws do my parenting then I am just as culpable if they get hurt as the person who hurts them, my kids are my responsibility after all, I need to take their well-being to heart and not expect government to do my job for me. Sure laws are necessary, and government obviously has a role to play in the well-being of my kids, but the buck stops with me.
Seven Days with Ubuntu Unity
In the U.S., there is no defense against such crimes. If a girl uses a fake ID, for example, to make you think that she's 18, they will still haul your ass to jail for statutory rape if you meet her in an adults-only club and have sex with her later that night. That's one of the big complaints people have about our laws. You do have to be a mind reader.
Here in Georgia not too long ago, we had a case of a 17-year-old girl and her 18-year-old boyfriend having consensual sex. I think it was her parents that found out about it, reported him to the police, and he had to spend the next three years of his life in jail and register as a sex offender because of it. Yes, he probably knew that she was only 17, but the point is that when it comes to "protecting" children, never underestimate the stupidity of politicians trying to pick up votes for being "tough on crime."
I have a better idea. Minors of any age simply cannot use the Internet. Then I can safely assume that everyone is an adult, and all of these "BUT THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!" laws can just go away. After all, think of the children, the Internet is full of nothing but perverts anyways, right?
With a law THAT ambiguous, I'm sure that every single person will at some point be branded some kind of predator. This is ridiculous.
Love sees no species.
I sure hope nobody here is underage.
...Is okay in Canada? They can acquit you then just decide "eh, that's not what we wanted. Let's have another trial"?
Back before AOL violated their own TOS by monitoring private chats, back when IM was new, back when IRC was for nerds (It still is, right?), one of the things I, an adult, loved to do was talk to other people online.
Different races, different cultures, different ages, too, provided new perspectives on life. Talking to a Californian and the O.J. case, talked to a German about the fall of the wall, talking to someone in South Africa about relationships, and even talking to kids about music (or anything else for which I found their fresh, sometimes naive perspective eye-opening) were activities I loved because they gave me a different way of looking at things. I consider polite conversation with as many people who are as different from me as possible to be an essential part of the lifelong process of self-education that we should all relish.
Yes, that means I talked to kids online.
I don't do that any more. I don't even try to talk to new people online anymore. So many of the old haunts were slowly invaded by LEOs blundering their way through silly entrapment schemes ("Hi, I'm 14/f/California. I love cheerleading and gymnastics. Do you want to talk to me? I've been having problems with my boyfriend cuz he wants to sex me and I'd like to know what an older guy thinks" was typical, although I didn't misspell nearly enough words.) that all the fun was sucked out of it.
Now, I talk on forums where the whole world can read what I say. That way, no one can accuse me of grooming. When I made the decision to eschew private conversations with strangers, I thought I was being too paranoid but withdrew, anyway, just to be on the safe side.
It seems I wasn't paranoid at all. There really are people out there who think that if an adult says "Hi" to a kid they don't know, said adult must be up to no good.
Sad.
Really, really sad.
I had better ban all under-18s from my Half Life 2:Deathmatch server then. I'm in the UK but some of the players are in the US and Canada and I don't want to end up extradited. In fact, I have no way of checking ages. Better close down the whole server!
A latent existence
I RTFA.
I didn't realize they didn't have double jeopardy in Canada.
How many times can a person be tried for the same offense in Canada? Is there a limit? Do prosecutors and courts just keep changing the rules and re-filing charges until they get a conviction?
I'm not being intentionally obtuse, here. I'm legitimately curious.
They should also require mandatory age disclosure since you can't know what is the age of somebody else on the InterWeb. Failure to disclose your age should be punishable with jail time, even for minors. After all, it's for the fucking children.
How many people are going to be arrested for asking children about their "personal interests or other innocuous topics" on the grounds that the person asking the questions might perhaps turn out to be a pedophile?
How do you establish the adult's intentions unless the adult has expressed a desire to commit an offense against the child, thus not requiring the broader interpretation of the law? The way the judge's decision is described, it would seem it isn't necessary to establish criminal intent, thus making people liable for conversations that are truly innocent.
There's often been an air of paranoia around many of the laws that are supposed to address the online victimization of children, but this one is about the most ridiculous I've seen. Idiots at the helm is all I can say.
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
The obvious legislative solution to this problem is to ban kids from using the internet until they are at least 18 years of age.
Much like children aren't allowed in bars, children should not be allowed on the internet.
Best solution yet. And if a child is found to be using the Internet, the parent(s) are charged the equivalent of 100 lifetimes of earnings based on the last 5 years of employment. And the child is sold at auction.
Why not ban kids altogether from the internet? That would do both the kids, their parents and the rest of the internet a big service. The kids would be outside more, the parents would have to talk to their kids and the internet would be a much nicer place.
If the internet is such an unsafe place and the parents wont supervise their kids they shouldn't be online.
HTTP/1.1 400
Bullshit. Mistake of Fact is a defense in a criminal case. It has to be reasonable. Meeting a girl in a restricted-access adult club, it is reasonable to assume that she is of-age. It's not iron-clad, it's an imperfect defense; if she acts younger, raises doubt, etc, prosecution can certainly raise those issues. But it becomes a question for the jury, rather than the set-in-stone determination you would have us believe. Mistake of Law, on the other hand, is very very rarely a defense. You pretty much have to have a personal letter from the attorney general telling you what he thinks the law is, you follow his advice, and he be wrong, before mistake of Law is a defense.
Secondly, I question the case you talk about in Georgia, since the age of consent there is 16. Are you referring to the tragic case of the 17 year old boy who had (supposedly consensual) sex with a 14 year old girl at a party and ended up receiving 10 years in jail for a felony statutory rape charge? It's tragic and stupid, but not as cut and dry as you mentioned. It and similar cases also elicited a change in the law, because it was so stupid. It's now a misdemeanor in Georgia.
Yes, I AM an attorney. And posting anonymously because I am reading slashdot at work....
I always thought Linux was a euphemism for virginity.
What a knee-jerk reaction to simply say either: "No children on the internet!" or "I must protect my children at all costs!". The first is a typical knee-jerk, the second just makes coddled children who *Won't* think for themselves, who grow up to be adults who expect the government to continue to coddle them. I have two girls, both under the age of 10. Both have a Facebook account registered under pseudonyms. Both have played MMORG's on my lap. My point? Parenting is more than just protection, it's education. Each of my daughters online sessions is supervised, and used to educate them on what IS and what IS NOT allowed. We repeatedly emphasis that anything done on the net is permanent. We teach how to don and maintain a layer of anonymity between their true selves and the keyboard. tl:dr Summery. Teach your children to use the net like you would teach them to ride a bike. Run beside them in the beginning, grow to riding beside them to teach road-rules with the goal of smart decision making as (mostly) self-sufficient teens.
I had a friend once that was caught by the police, but under extremely specific circumstances, and did not go to jail, although the police threatened to put him on some sort of watch list, even though it was all very overblown.
MSN is not just for kids, you can not call it a teen social network, EVERYone uses it these days.
He happened to be on a group forum of some type, and ended up chatting with this perticular adult(?) seeing as when he asked what age she was, she had said she was 19 going on 20 ( I have to admit it was pretty young even for me...)
but legal, so he continued to converse with her, and then after some online courting (if you can call it that) that lasted a few weeks
he was asking to meet her in person to go for a date or something.
I guess the parents were not all that trusting of their daughter and went and followed her to her rendezvous, this in turn lead to them
calling the police when they met my friend who recently turned 30. Apparently she had lied about her age and was 13, but he would not even had known that without at least meeting her first to be then able to deal with her lie.
Long story short, the cops came he explained to the parents and the cops about how he met her online in some place and asked her her age, and luckily she was not that dishonest to lie to everyone, she admitted to saying she was older then she really was.
The cops tries to put some fear into him (wrongly) by telling him about these lists that online predators are kept a close eye with.
I worked as a bouncer in a club where these very young and under aged girls would always offer themselves to be able to earn their
weekly pass into the clubs, and trust me, some really did look much older then they were. At some point you have to realize, they are smart enough to play the game, of lying to get what they want, even sleep around if they can at least get in every Friday into the hotspot club of the town, get fake id etc, etc...
It is up to the parents to be more attentive into their kids lives and be more a part of it then one day just wake up and get smacked in the face with reality that their kid is sexually active, or a drug addict, or gay or being bullied at school, or....the list goes on.
The parents need to be a little more about the kids and less about themselves.
Reasonable thinking should be rewarded.
...has created a climate in which people will no longer intervene to stop children fighting or warn children about danger in case the children accuse the adults of "inappropriate behaviour".
Yep. I do not intervene when I see a group of children smashing on another person regardless of age. I just walk on by and mind my own business for fear of being accused of something unlawful. Let the evil children of society run amok and lock 'em up when they turn 18.
You don't see a problem with laws being created just in case you need something to pin on an alleged perpetrator?
I'll bet that the people in favor of RICO never expected it would get applied to anti-abortion protesters. I suspect a good many of them WERE anti-abortion protesters.
The more bad laws out there, the more the state can "legitimately" arrest you for "driving while black", or "young", or "geeky", or "activist", or fill-in-the-blank. The more people end up ignoring real laws because they can't keep track of which ones are just there for entrapment purposes.
Because the law of unintended consequences isn't going to get repealed.
This is the proof that "hard cases make bad law". Based on the behavior of one slimeball, the court now seeks to criminalize an entire category of behavior. This now includes any conversation that (TFA) "could be interpreted to mean anything that would make it easier or more probable for a young person to be taken advantage of." Note that "to be taken advantage of" can be by anyone - it is no longer necessary for the person holding the conversation to have any ill intent.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
try to reason with the six foot scaly mother that shows up to defend those eggs. you have just as much chance of defeating the "think of the children!" irrational impulse of homo sapiens. because as members of the ancient order of crocodilians has discovered, like many mammalians, is that if you invest in only a few offspring (as opposed to the fish and amphibian strategy of "fire and forget" 10,000 eggs), then it is a survival advantage to be overprotective of your children
the irrational desire to protect children from the various dangerous scenarios of adult IS an irrational desire. much like the irrational desire to feed. or the irrational desire to fornicate
in other words: not so rational from a point of view of principles and concepts, but very rational from the point of view of the preservation of and continuation of life: take care of your children
biological imperatives trump all high minded concepts. principles and concepts work only when they aren't interfering with biological imperatives. as an example: every right, freedom, and sense of decency you hold dear and valuable in your mind is just one food riot away from being completely violated without any recourse to justice
no police, court system, or government body can remain coherent when those police, judges, and government bureaucrats are busier trying to procure some food
so pay attention to biological imperatives, they matter a hell of a whole lot. ignore them at the peril of losing all progress we've ever made in human society
one of which being: "think of the children!" there is a very real biological rational reason to protect your offspring from the real world until they are able enough physically and mentally to protect themselves. evolution favors the survival rate of organisms that actively protect their offspring, where that set of offspring is small, such as us humans. so "think of the children!" is an overbearing, overwhelming, messy, intrusive impulse that cannot be reasoned with. and yet it makes 100% sense biologically
all i'm saying is that "think of the children!" might be the butt of every slashdot joke, but it is also an irrational "hysteria" that you need to make peace with and accept, because it is simply never, ever going away. because it actually makes a hell of a lot of sense, but from a completely different point of view, a point of view that trumps all other points of view: the biological imperatives
look at it this way: without children, all the arguments you could ever have about rights and freedoms won't matter one bit if there's no one here to inherit the society and the government you tried to improve. the health and well being of the generation that comes after you is all you leave in this world, on an individual and a societal level. so it really is of the highest importance that you do your best to protect children until they can fend for themselves
this simple, brutal logic defeats and overrules all other arguments you can possibly make on the matter
"think of the children" reigns supreme. it is your job to simply accept this biological imperative, as messy and intrusive as it is, as messy and intrusive as the need to visit the bathroom, the desire to fornicate, and the need to shove sustenance into your mouth: creatures that have few offspring and act protective of their children have an evolutionary advantage over those that don't
no matter how overzealous that protective instinct is, it will persist due to the laws of evolution, and you need to make peace with it and accept it: its never going away
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
In Canada, don't think of the children! It's an offense!
(I wonder, in Soviet Canada, do children think of you?).
It might not be trivial that the baby boomer generation, who more than any other generation sated themselves at an inestimable cost to future generations, are intent in keeping their children and grandchildren in suspended development. I recently finished an excellent set of lectures by R Wyman global population and biological development. The lectures are one of a number of an excellent series of Yale lectures with comparatively outstanding production values. I'm not suggesting Professor Wyman even hints at the subjugation of a younger generation by an older generation by enforcing a prolonged adolescence but his lectures on ape behaviour speak to behaviour in older males in terms of excluding others from resources. Thinking of the well being of children is sacrosanct and well intentioned but it's not uninteresting to view it as an unconscious ploy by a bloated, disproportionately over populated generation to control resources.
ideopath @ play
So I log into a chat room in the early evening, and tell my daughter to haul her ass home from the neighbour's house for dinner [*]. Presumably that would be considered inappropriate wording (although a common-enough phrasing), and I'm an adult while she's an under-age teenager. The neighbour might even witness this dialog and report it to the cops.
Could I then be arrested as a kiddie predator (or whatever) under Canadian law? If so, then I agree: ban kids from the net, at least in Canada.
[*] Actually, I use IM for communications like that, but no doubt the same laws would be misapplied.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
Get your god damn kids of my internet, or else I'll sue you for trying to lure me to talk to your children.
You know it makes sense, a little reminder from jointm1k.
I work in schools doing computer tech support. I see teachers already laboring under existing rules covering in-person behaviour; no hugs for kindergartners, no "inappropriate" conversations, etc. The message is, kids are bad news, dangerous to everyone. I'd sooner cut my own throat than try to help a lost child in a public place. Is this REALLY what we want?
I think a lot of people are missing a very important piece of the puzzle: The guy pretended to be 17. I think this may be a big factor in their decision to prosecute this guy. It wasn't just a case of an adult chatting with a child. It was a case of a guy pretending to be a child himself and talking to another child. Of course he couldn't pretend to be much younger than 17 as I'm sure his voice was too deep, but he could still at this point pretend to be a "big brother" to the victim.
That's the way they work. The entire mainstream media operates on this model. Some just do it with more class than others, such as bigger publications manufacturing controversies about things like the "digital divide" or "gender wage gaps" based on faulty assumptions like not adjusting for the career choices of men and women.
The public needs to realize that the "free press" is not the "mainstream media," but the freedom of ordinary people to print their speech. In the U.S., the first amendment was never intended to protect journalists as a profession, but to broadly protect the common man's access and property rights in means to publish protected speech.
There is a lack of balance in the aims of some children's rights campaigners. While they may, or may not, have saved some children and punished some perpetrators, they have also succeeded in poisoning the atmosphere for everyone else. No man can now play with a child without feeling self conscious, second guessing what anyone watching might be thinking. Even fathers find themselves wondering from time to time how they might be perceived by others. Having demonised first single men, then fathers, uncles and brothers, here in the UK the zealots are now also focusing their attention on the mothers and sisters who might corrupt a child, and in doing so, they are destroying what little innocent and natural interaction between adults and children that ought to prevail in any society.
It is the campaigners obsessively pushing for these all encompassing changes who should be put under closer scrutiny, because it is they who have long since left behind any reasonable pursuit of wrong doers in favour of a witch hunt which affects every normal person in society today.
Who are they? They need help.
If they didn't want to be prosecuted, they shouldn't have waved back to that kid in the supermarket who thought their hat looked funny.
I'm not saying the anti-abortion cranks SHOULDN'T have been prosecuted... I was all awash with schadenfreude over it myself... I'm saying that it was not the results any of them who thought RICO was just peachy was what they intended.
If you don't think this kind of decision is a problem, then you're suffering from a failure of imagination. Because this is exactly the kind of thing that leads to people suddenly discovering that yes, the law really DOES mean what it says.
The problem with the case seems to be that the f*cked up by choosing the wrong charge, had it shot down because of such, and then chose to modify the conditions of the charge in the retrial to make it fit the "crime."
Apparently the perp in question - though he hadn't actually scheduled to meet the underage girl - had discussed with her the things he wanted to do, including oral sex etc. As he hadn't asked to meet her, the initial judge tossed the luring charge.
The second judge greatly expanded the scope of what "luring" is, thus allowing that charge to stick. Now it's *WAY* too broad.
It seems to me that the initial screw-up was charging the guy with luring in the first place. There are appropriate charges for an adult having "dirty talk" (as opposed to just talking about sex, i.e. like a Social Studies or Science class) with a minor. Unfortunately I don't have the exact name of such, but they do exist, and it seems they would have been more appropriate for this scenario than massively broadening the existing law.
Now it seems I'll have to "card" everyone I meet online. And don't forget that this might not just apply to a chatroom. You've got bulletin boards, and even game lobbies/chats etc. So the next time you tell some opponent "I'm going to f*ck you up", and he turns out to be a 14-15 year old, maybe you'll get a visit from the police.
One of the reasons I no longer join guilds: all the kids wanting to (1) be grown up; (2) looking for a Big Brother / Sister or parental substitute; (3) denying they're kids.
So shame on ya if you're a Cub Scout or Boy Scout leader, eh?
What an abysmally stupid idea this law is.
The thing that scares me about this idea is that I'm old enough to have friends who have kids. From time to time, I talk to those kids -- both in person and on-line. There's nothing inappropriate going on and the parents like that I'm involved with their children. But this law would, in theory, allow people to bring down law enforcement against me for this. I don't know how many times I've received dirty looks from people who see me going to school plays or picking up someone else's kids from school, just because I'm not the parent. this law is really open to abuse and I can't see much good coming from it.
Rather than arrest people based on this law, they should just build a wall around 4chan and declare it a prison. More efficient that way.
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
I ignore any child that I do not personally already know. The 'sex offender' laws and the shrill cries of helicopter parents have caused this. I'm not getting accused of being sex offender (which will stick with me even if exonerated on court) because someone's un-minded child said hello to me. Likewise, I'm not helping any child I don't know if they appear to be in trouble. I will call 911 and watch, but I'm not getting involved. It's the only safe way to be an adult male in US society.
Blar.
let's put it this way: a society that pits your "rational" concerns againt primitive impulses is a society that will soon be extinct
you are mortal. you will die. you must work to recreate a new generation to replace you. you must fill them with the values you cherish. part of doing that involves protecting them from the wider adult world until they are emotionally, psychologically, physically, and mentally mature enough to handle the adult world
in other words, a SYNTHESIS of the primitive impulses you reject and a concern for a more rational world is the only valid approach. but if you pit your rational world against primitive impulses, i have sorry news for you: primitive impulses prevail, every single time, and always will
because those impulses are 100% necessary for the society and the rational values you cherish to even exist in the first place. primitive impulses can exist without your precious rational world. meanwhile, your precious rational world cannot exist without primitive impulses
so take heed of those primitive impulses, accept them, and incorporate them into your world view. opposing them or ignoring them leads to the extinction of every concept you value
"Think of the children" belongs in the past. We should strive to outgrow it rather than let it take over our lives -- and our minds
"think of the children" is never, ever going away. in any society today, or in any hypothetical society that exists in the future (that actually works). if you "outgrow" your desire to be protective of children, you've simply declared your intention to go extinct as a society
every higher faculty you value is irretrievably held hostage by lower primitive impulses. recognize that, or forfeit logical coherence on the subject matter
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
So, I'm a fan of a singer that also has many younger fans (teens) and talk to them fairly often on the official forum and on Twitter...this makes me a evil pedophile?
So, if I just so happen to strike up a conversation with one of my daughter's friends, then I'm a criminal??? I'm not Canadian, but what if that were the case, would planning, say, a surprise party, on a sneaky basis (hey, its a surprise party!!) be a criminal offense?? I doubt it would hold up in any court.
The first time I read his little take on barrels and bungholes, I thought it was funny. Now, it looks weirdly prescient.
There are even some situations in the US in which you can be subject to the equivalent of double or even triple jeopardy. Eg. if you are in the military, then after you get acquitted by a state court, the military can try and convict you. If you somehow get acquitted of the state crime, you can always be tried and convicted of an equivalent (but different) federal crime - that's how some civil rights atrocities were handled. I've heard that the worst thing you can do is: murder a postal worker, while a member of the armed forces, on tribal Indian land.
evolution has bestowed us with a hierarchy of reactions. tap your knee, it kicks. your spinal colummn takes care of that. higher than that, we have fight or flight: given a shock, the adrenal glands kick in with cortisol, etc. emotions like fear are GOOD: they keep you alive. driving sleepily in the middle of the night makes you afraid of crashing, you pull over, and sleep (another basic biological function you can't simply wish away). this is not a rational decision. or rather it IS a rational decision, prompted by the need to take into account your natural organic biological fears
in other words, your rational world exists atop a pyramid. if you for some reason ignore or disavow the lower baser levels of the pyramid, the edifice of the very top of the pyramid so important to you simply topples over
"the idea that humans will become extinct for not freaking out is itself irrational, and false"
fight or flight keeps you alive. and only when you are alive is everything else you hold dear in terms of a rational world even possible. you've lost touch with the biological foundation upon which you sit. that you are not aware of the foundation of lower impulses and emotions does not nullify their existence or their importance to keeping you around and breathing. in fact, ignore these baser impulses at your peril, or it is your existence that is nullified
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I'm too lazy to RTFA, but does this law only take in consideration online use? Is speaking 'inappropriately' to a child offline OK? Also, who decides what 'inappropriate' is? It seems a bit too open to random interpretation to my liking. What if you're a parent, should you simply stop talking to your children to be safe from possible abuse by this law?
So now if I Tea-Bag some poor kid in Halo or Unreal Tournament I could face jail time! They can have my tea-bag when they pry it from my cold dead crotch.
the impulse has existed longer than we have been homo sapiens, and isn't remotely unique to us as a species. take two mating pairs, of any species that has few children:
mating pair A has 4 children and walks away from them as soon as possible
mating pair B has 4 children and zealously protects them until adulthood
mating pair A has 1 out of 4 children who survives to mate and reproduce
mating pair B has 3 out of 4 children who survives to mate and reproduce
do you understand evolution?
then you tell me what happens next over succeeding generations
you tell me about the possibility of a world without an irrational overbearing drive to protect children
a crocodile knows the answer to this question
this hysteria has only been around for a decade? how old are crocodilians as a zoological order? try 220 million years, into the triassic period
"think of the children!" irrational hysteria has been around for at least 220 million years, and is a foundational human impulse rooted deeper into our brains than our existence as simians, or even mammals, nevermind as homo sapiens
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Clearly the average poster's demographic is a 20 year old "child" or an adult who has spend most of his life living in his mother's basement.
The reason we have laws to protect children online is because children lack the judgment to discern the hallmarks of a dangerous situation from a benign one. You can't trust a child to know what is safe or to make safe decisions. You also can't trust what a child says - "My parents hate me" might really mean that they took away his Wii because he had bad grades. Certainly the greater responsibility is on the parents, but adults online should be aware of the potential dangers posed by online predators as well. Most parents, if they are diligent, monitor their kid's Internet use and if they do allow their children to play online games, disable all of the chat features that would allow a potential predator to strike up a relationship with a child. Unfortunately, many parents don't do this - but the children should not have to pay for their parent's lack of judgment.
Except under exceptional circumstances, random adults have no purpose in talking to someone else's child without the consent of their responsible adult. Would you walk up to a random child in a mall and strike up a conversation? Unless their was a good reason - i.e. the child appeared lost and was crying, etc., if you did that to one of my kids I'd put a stop to it immediately and notify security of a potential predator. This happens all the time in the real world (i.e. outside of your mother's basement) - usually it is just some well meaning grandmother who grew up in a different era and wants to give a toddler a peanut butter cookie (causing instant anaphylaxis and a mad rush for the epi-pen), but sometimes the intent is more sinister.
A conversation needn't be sexual to be predatory. Some freak in Michigan (IIRC) posing as a teenage girl on a suicide help forum, talked a young woman in Ontario into committing suicide. In this case, it didn't involve a child, and unfortunately, there are no laws against what this bastard did, but it is not hard to extrapolate from these types of situations if an adult (albeit depressed) can be so impressionable, what might happen to a child in similar situations.
Oh - and for whomever asked the question. Double Jeopardy is protected under the Canadian Constitution, however it only applies after the judgment is final (final conviction or acquittal). The Crown can appeal an acquittal in an error of law has been made, the judgment can be set aside and a new trial ordered. This is not considered double jeopardy because the judgment was not final. This is also the manner in which double jeopardy is implemented in the UK, France, Germany and many other nations.
the source of that comment of yours is simply an inability on your part to perceive and/ or to take into account the positive effects of the irrational impulse: healthy and surviving children
i admit every single one of the negative effects of this irrational impulse on society
however, unlike you i see the balance: i make note of the positive effects, and see that those more than counterbalance the negative effects
additionally, i come to the logically inescapable conclusion that due to evolution, the impulse is utterly inseparable from our existence as homo sapiens, so deeply rooted it is in our minds. such that even if on balance it was a negative effect, that doesn't mean we could get rid of the impulse. whether a net positive effect or net negative effect, the best we could do is merely attempt to mitigate the consequences of the impulse, incompletely and forever, as a simple maintenance function of civilization
its never going away. you need to accept it and incorporate it in your worldview. rejecting it is unsuccessful
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I can't see this being legally enforceable because there are way too many places online where you can't be even remotely sure that the person you're conversing with is of legal age, even if it's somewhere that should ONLY be adults. Even online dating sites that are pay-only could potentially have an underage person on it, using their parents' credit card to gain access, or using someone else's account.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Does this mean I can get in trouble for telling annoying little kids who do nothing but talk smack and continually stream nonsense and or music where they can stick their rocket launchers and sniper rifles?
Canadians should cling to their core values and keep the drinking age as low as possible. Assuming *EVERYONE* talking to kids is a perverted pred makes me hate Canada more than I already do... The US should just get it over with and invade the damn country... May I suggest opening with ICBM missle attacks and cluster bombings of all french speaking provinces.
How does one truly know if they are chatting with a child without video? Psychic Internet Line? I'm all for child protection and I'm again pedophiles. But assuming one can truly be 100% of the context of a conversation between child and adult, how do we adults teach the kids out there anything, if we can't communicate with them?
I think Canada needs to rethink this strategy. First, there should be a way to establishing credibility in the identity of a person going online. It may be time for governments of countries like Canada, the US, etc... to get on board with a "internet based age verification system" which all web based social networks must use in order to access their servers. The porn sites have it easy, have a credit card, then you're of age. Maybe ISP could be resellers for these "age verification" where if you don't own a credit card, but are being billed by your ISP, then you must be of age, and they can sell you this card..
Well, I'm 11 years old... ...And you're ALL fucked!
Sheesh, some of the comments here have scarred me for life...
You know there is something that could be done. Stop whining about it and write to every applicable Canadian government official in your area and explain to them, in no uncertain terms, how what just went through has destroyed the internet. Optionally, refrain from revealing your identity and point out that replying to the message could make that government official guilty of child luring if you aren't actually over 18.
There's how many Canadians here? Get to work being a useful citizen.
"inappropriate conversation with a child"
LOL - Now that's funny.
Anyone that has ever been on XBOX Live knows that A) it is full of kids, and B) there is not such thing an an appropriate conversion.
You are just morons - as most people seem to become once they have had children.
People should just stop having children - that would solve ALL or problems in the long run.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Ban Canada!
"It takes a village to raise a child." Yes, as long as you also have a police officer and two witnesses present and it is tape recorded.
Children are starting to resemble museum pieces. Too fragile to be in public.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
thinking of the children would give them the freedom to decide weather or not they can talk to people. Thinking of the children would give them a choice in the matter, rather than automatically labeling them as victims of crime as soon as they turn on a computer.
I personally think that as long as you're over the age of 10, you should be able to understand that people on the internet are rarely who they say they are and should not be trusted
Perhaps you're thinking of this 20/20 episode: The Age of Consent.
your approach is exactly the right attitude
my argument isn't with you. my argument is with those who think "think of the children!" is a modern invention of the media/ {insert your favorite political bogeyman here} and that the impulse can be easily discard
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
When i was a child, if almost ANY adult told you to do something, you did it. If ANY adult said something to your parents, you were in deep trouble. Where i grew up, if kids were doing wrong, ANY adult would be expected to say something to them and they would generally listen. This is not the world we live in today.
Good-bye
"If you're an adult and if you're having conversations with a child on the Internet, be warned because even if your conversations aren't sexual and even if your conversations are not for the purpose of meeting a child and committing an offence against a child, what you're doing is potentially a crime," he said.
So, mentoring, by virtue of tending to establish a bond of trust that could be abused by a bad person, is now banned.
It's good to know that the US and the UK haven't cornered the market on legislating from the bench and shifting the burden of proof to the defendants. When did we decide that prosecutors no longer had to establish evidence of intent before someone could be declared guilty of committing a crime? Next thing you know, taxi drivers will have to go out of business because they might be charged with accessory to armed bank robbery for "driving the getaway car" without any knowledge of it. A word to our wonderful judges across the world: fit the crime to the law, not the law to crime, please!
http://bohemian-geek.blogspot.com
If you make everything illegal then there is no 'right side of the law' to walk on anymore, I guess that's what they are going for then, quite the radical move.
unfortunately, you revealed a fairly big hole in your argument from the get go. Most posters, around the age of 18 to 25 will invariably end up having to converse with someone under the age of 18 just by being on the internet. If for example, I were 17 (legally, I would be a child) and you replied to this message, you'd be subject to this law. You can't say what you say isn't appropriate, because the law never mentions what is and is not appropriate. For example, if I lived in a culture where you could not wear anything but long clothing covering all but the eyes, and you mentioned wearing a tshirt randomly, you'd be mentioning something inappropriate for my culture. so hypothetically, we're all screwed. also, don't bother mentioning that since the situation may not lead to a court case, it still gives the police enough evidence to get a warrant to search my house
Playing Devil's Advocate for a moment here, and with the usual IANAL disclaimer...
If one disregards the statement by Mark Hecht -- which carries no legal weight whatsoever -- this decision appears to condone "luring" as an stacked charge, i.e. a charge that's added to another charge, like "committing a felony with a firearm" is added to an ordinary felony charge.
If so, then all of these civil-liberties concerns about all conversations between adults and children being criminalized, are overblown. If one is found guilty of abusing or exploiting a child, and if evidence of past contact with the child over the Internet is found, then that contact can (retroactively) be charged as "luring", along with the regular prosecution of the abuse or exploitation. But, in the usual case of an adult talking to a child, that's still perfectly legal. Despite what the mainstream media would have us believe, most adults who talk to children, don't end up exploiting or abusing them.
And Mark Hecht should STFU until he has something intelligent to say
I'm sorry, but I can't help you with compiling your kernel because you're under 18.
why is it that today's children's rights issues seem to be more focused on limiting what a child can and cannot do rather than giving them responsibility to make their own choices?
It would have been better maybe to make the internet R rated or at least PG rated. How many have acted older in their life when young? I would think about 99% of the entire human population. The problem on the net is that it is much simpler to "act" a certain age. Conversely I have seen many well aged persons act as if they were 9 year old punk-snots on the net.
The law in questions refers to communication with a child under the age of 14 in order to facilitate a crime involving that child.
BTW - the age of consent in Canada is 16 and the act contains a "close-in-age exception" so that 14 and 15 year olds can have sex with someone who is less than 5 years older then they are.
The age of majority is 18 in 6 of the provinces and 19 in the remaining 4 provinces and 3 territories.
If you aren't part of the solution, then there is good money to be made prolonging the problem
500+ comments and this was the first one dealing with the facts in the case.
The parents / guardians should have the privilege and the responsibility of deciding whether their dependents are allowed to use the Internet and who they are allowed to communicate with. The free market can easily provide a mesh of products and services for monitoring a child's online activity and alerting the parents if certain criterias are breached. Trusting the unaccountable and violent power monopoly known as "government" with this responsibility will only help further consolidate its power!
"Think of the children" belongs in the past. We should strive to outgrow it rather than let it take over our lives -- and our minds.
No, there's nothing wrong with thinking of the children if you are actually *thinking*. I have an 11 year old daughter, and I most certainly want her to have access to an internet (and real world) with freedom of expression, respect for privacy, and all the other values I care about. My worry isn't so much about online predators (although care is certainly needed) as about nutcases who want to push totalitarian laws onto the rest of us.
I think anyone who truly thinks about the interests of our kids will fight hard to keep these "child protection" laws off the books.
pushing drugs, violence (not games, but seriously damaging stuff), emotional trauma and non-sexual abuse on minors.
Isn't selling drugs illegal in and of itself? Isn't abuse illegal in and of itself?
I'm fine with laws restricting speech (slander, fraud, yelling fire in a crowded theater). I'm fine with laws against bullying. I'm fine with laws protecting children from horrible events.
As long as they're enforced sensibly.
Which laws have never been enforced non-sensibly?
Also, I would think that a law that says (in legalese) "you can't deprive other people of their freedom; in particular you can't force other people to have sex with you or make porn for you" should about cover the whole child porn issue.
Or do you think there are children who consent to having sex with adults or being porn stars?
I guess someone forgot about Peel's Principles: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peelian_Principles
The test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with it.
This is pretty sad. I gained much of my early knowledge of computers by communicating with adults online (when "online" meant dialing into BBSes). There were even events called Users' Group meetings, where adults and adolescents would mingle (gasp!) and share information. More often than not, the adults would actually learn something from the "kids" (or at least that was my know-it-all teenager perception). To my knowledge, there were no lawsuits over someone using "bad words" in front of little Johnny, or instances that required anyone to point to a spot on a doll afterward.
Young people *need* adults in their lives. Yes, there will be instances where some adult does something terrible, just like there are (far more) instances where children do terrible things to each other, but on the whole, it's a positive relationship, and extremely rewarding all around. This recent push to separate youth from adults, and then expect them to magically become adult-like at 18, is simply fantasy. I'm not saying they should spend all their time with older people, but neither should it be taken to the other extreme, online or off.
And offtopic, why the fsck does the Supreme Court of Canada look like a ski resort? "Quit lopping off the heads or we'll make you do a DOUBLE diamond run, eh?"
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
no matter how overzealous that protective instinct is, it will persist due to the laws of evolution, and you need to make peace with it and accept it: its never going away
Humans also have an instinct to socialize. The internet is one medium for this kind of communication. I don't think you can ever make this other instinct go away either, and I think there should be room for both.
A law that means you can be busted for talking normally about normal stuff (by a fairly reasonable definition of "normal", not including sex) with children whose age you can't verify is in my opinion a bad thing. Would you like to go to jail for saying "DIAF" on the tubes?
“Thou shalt not think that any male over the age of 30 that plays with a child that is not their own is a pedophile... Some people are just nice.”
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
"Should I have sex for the first time, unprotected with my boyfriend to celebrate our one month relationship tonight?"
"Can't help you, don't want to go to jail."
"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
Nope, sorry. I don't think there are any. It's just kids all the way down.
Because they are children and lack the judgment and experience to make their own choices. It is very easy for a 12 year old to make choices the fuck their lives up forever. I don't need an education! What are the chances I get pregnant, or contract an STI. I won't fall. etc. That is why the state entrusts their well being to parents or guardians, who (hopefully) can exercise better judgment until such a time/age as the young man/woman is able to assume responsibility for themselves.
If you aren't part of the solution, then there is good money to be made prolonging the problem
I feel so much safer now!
I don't know if it's accurate, but this post is the only one that actually answered my questions.
In my first line, I alluded to a time when AOL didn't violate their own TOS by monitoring private chats. That's where it happened. At one time, it was possible to create private rooms on AOL and talk to other adults about adult things. If you were of a mind to, you could arrange phone calls and meetups. (I'm straight and I was pretty naive but even I was aware that some referred to AOL as "GayOL" back then.)
It all happened around the time that the evil scourge known as AOLs Community Action Team (CATWatch01, may you burn in hell!!) started invading chat rooms and began the completely unregulated enforcement of their incredibly puritan sensibilities by screwing with the accounts of anyone who dared enter an adult-themed room. At about the same time, LEOs started popping up on AOL, too. For a while, until they got better at it, it was drop dead easy to spot the donut-munchers in, say, the "phone sex" room by their immediate, over-enthusiastic responses to your initial IM. And half the time they were 14/f/CA and either a cheerleader or a gymnast.
I ran across the "guys of questionable sexuality" and "some later age teens" but the cops were fundamentally different in their approach. They tried aggressively to get people to make clearly incriminating statements and weren't willing to carry on much of a conversation for very long if you didn't. I remember reading about some upstate New York publicity-hound county prosecutor who had set up a task force of local cops specifically to troll chat rooms and lure men to her jurisdiction so she could prosecute them and, most important, get her face in the papers. At the time, I remember thinking "Gee, I think I've talked to some of those bozos."
At the time, I thought it was funny and sad. Now that I better understand the anti-liberty implications of the police routinely using advanced technology to invade our confidential lives, I just find it scary and infuriating.
What's next? Radar that can see us through the walls of our homes?
Oh, wait...